Re: confused!!!
How old are you? Have you actually been through the court system lately? From start to finish?
You need to really educate yourself on the legal process. It changes even within the same country from State to State. Even the family courts in Canada are vastly different from America.
We don’t live in the 80s and 90s anymore where courts automatically hand over custody to the mother. In fact, courts do not like granting sole custody to one parent alone. If they do, they enforce a court order where the other non-custodial parent will get 50% access time - which means the non-custodial parent does not have to pay child support. It’s actually very rare that the courts will give a parent sole custody. In fact, the courts want the parents to settle it and make their own arrangements to avoid the time and money which is required to attend court.
Do the math of how much it costs to go through the legal system. A decent lawyer is at least, minimum, $300 per hour. A case usually goes for up to 2-3 years. Lawyers do not work for free. They want their money up front before they do any work. There is no guarantee that an order for Costs will be awarded. Chances of recovering the money invested is slim.
So if a single parent spent around $50K (yes, it costs that much these days) fighting in court for custody and child support, all they would have to do is cry and manipulate the court and the Judge will just hand over custody? If it were only that easy. 
You underestimate the amount of psychological turmoil and stress that is involved in going into court for custody. The financial aspect of it is different story all together.
I am quite sure you are aware that there are Judges out there who may not want to hear Applicant/Respondent (mother/father) testimony. Depending on the Judge, they may want to only hear the Lawyers make their submissions. So then, that means the mother won’t get a chance to cry on the stand. How sad.
They do not care if the father beat up the mother or vice versa as the courts do not want this to affect either parents relationship with the child. Abuse will only become an issue IF the parent HITS the child. The relationship between mother/father is irrelevant.
I’m sure your research skills also showed that Judges rarely award spousal support anymore. It is only awarded in situations where the wife did not work (for years) to raise the children. You know most women these days work, even single mothers … so why would they claim spousal support? The Judge will grant child support, but not spousal support.
Have you seen the child support table guildelines? That is the breakdown of how much money the parent has to pay based on their salary. So for example, if you make $35,000K per year, the non-custodial parent would be required to pay around $350 per month - depending on all other expenses of course, which each party has to provide proof of in court. You can’t just decide how much you want to pay or receive. It’s idiotic to think that.
Really, educate yourself before you make jaahil comments where you lose all respect (if you care for it).
Also, in case you didn’t realise, a court order is only enforceable if you are a national of that court where the order was issued. If you have another passport (i.e. a Pakistani passport), they can’t enforce it as you can slip by the authorities who have a warrant out on your american/canadian identification papers.
One of my lawyer’s clients owes 60 THOUSAND dollars in missed child support (not spousal) which he refuses to pay. He makes over six figures.
He STILL has all of his access and gets to visit the children because it is against the law to block access (that means, the father can have the mother arrested for not allowing him to visit his child) … but he just doesn’t want to pay financially towards them. He flies in an out of the country freely on his Jamaican passport.
Mashallah - right?